Americans First Time Seeing British Pounds

The coin you held up against the two dollar bill was actually a 2p coin, your equivalent of 2 cents, a £2 coin is quite large and bi-coloured both gold and silver and, if someone says that's £1.99 and you give then a 2p coin they'll think you're having a laugh 😂👍

Hi guys, great video as per usual. The 2 pence bronze coin is equivalent to 2 pennies not 2 dollars. We also have a one pound coin and a two pound coin, that you don’t appear to have, but will see lots of. We tend to use the smaller denominations ( I can’t remember the last time I saw a fifty pound note), so don’t be shocked if that’s the only fifty you see.

You were correct about the reason for money sizes being different. Visually impaired people can tell by touch what note or coin they're handling. Over the years a few of our coins got redesigned because their size/shape was too close to other coins. I'm not visually impaired but can identify each note & coin with my eyes shut, it's a very good system

Mixing up pennys and pounds is so funny. Imagine you’re a cashier and you’re handed 2p (£0.02) for something that costs £2.

The different sizes help blind people. The coins also have different tactile feels to them and have a memorable pattern (1p is small and smooth, 2p is large and smooth, 5p is small with ridges, 10p is large with ridges, 20p is small and non-circular, 50p is large and non-circular, £1 is small and thick, £2 is large and thick). American money being the same size and colour and tactile feel must be really awful for the visually impaired. It's one of the things I like about UK/EU money.

"pence" is plural of "penny". Your equivalent would be "cents" or "cent". The (approximate) equivalent of the $1 bill would be the £1 coin. We used to have £1 notes, but they were replaced by the first (circular) £1 coin in the 1980s, and that was then replaced by the new (12-sided) £1 coin a few years ago. Have to disagree with Angela - the fact that all the bills are the same size (and colour) is something that I particularly dislike about American money. I keep notes (bills) in my wallet in denomination order, with the highest-value ones at the back, so with the higher-denomination ones being taller, it's easy to see where the transitions are. No, there are not chips in the money. There are metallic sections as an anti-counterfeiting device. "I promise to pay the bearer on demand..." is the basis of fiat currency. Basically, the note itself is fundamentally worthless, it's just an IOU. The Bank of England technically promises to pay the note's face value to whoever presents it at the bank. JMW Turner was a famous English painter, known particularly for atmospheric landscapes. His name was given to the annual "Turner Prize" for art. Yes, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 coins are in common circulation, although £2 coins are less common. The £5 coin exists, but is not in common circulation. Another thing to note is that the 2p coin (which you missed) is sized such that it is twice the weight of a 1p coin, and similarly for 5p and 10p coins. Therefore, you can weigh a mixture of 1p and 2p coins (or 5p and 10p coins) to ascertain their value without having to sort them.

Yes, the 50p is in common circulation. For some reason it is one of the coins I most commonly use personally.

So in Britain, we have from smallest to biggest, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, and then we have the £1 coin and the £2 coin (not to be confused with the 1p coin and 2p coin lol). The £1 coin was recently changed to be 12 sided, rather than a perfect circle, to make it harder to counterfeit. And yes, the 50p coin is very common over here, while the £50 note, you'll rarely see.

When I used to visit the USA twice a year I was shocked at how easy it was to get the notes mixed up due to them all being the same size & colour. You really have to look at them carefully to make sure you don't give someone a $20 bill instead of a lower denomination. I have no idea how blind people cope with it. It is a shame that you didn't have all the coins because you would notice how different they were from each othet in size, shape and weight. Again, this is for the benefit of the blind. When you visit us here in the UK you will also realize that you don't have to add tax onto the price of items in the shops because it's already done. What you see on the price tag is what you pay. Great reaction, albeit a bit frantic.

Pence is simply the plural of penny and equivalent to your cents and penny. So two pence (2p) is just two pennies, not equivalent to two dollars. There are also one and two pound (£1 and £2) coins, which are equivalent to your one and two dollar bills. And bill (US) = note (UK). So we say a five pound note. Hope that helps.

The guy on the back of the £20 note, Joseph Mallard William Turner (Usually abbreviated to JMW Turner) was a 19th century painter, who is widely considered to be one of the greatest artists Britain has ever produced. The ship visible behind him on the note is the HMS Temeraire, which was the subject of a painting by Turner called The Fighting Temeraire - voted as Britain's favourite painting in a BBC poll a few years ago (it's also the painting that James Bond discusses with Q when they meet for the first time in Skyfall).

Cool fact: combining one of each UK coin (1p,2p,5p,10p,20pand50p) creates a coat of arms.

Euro bills are also different sizes and colours and quite honestly, it's one of the best things about them. We don't usually hold our bills in our hands, they are in our wallets until we use them to pay... and if you open up a wallet, we can easily spot every bank note in there simply because they "stack" in size. If you place a €50, €20, €10 and €5 in order (large to small), you can see in an instant without flicking through the bills that you have €85. If you do the same with $85 you have to look at each individual bill to know how much you have in total simply because you can't tell from a distance. Open up an EU/UK wallet and you immediatly see which bills you have in there. If you really want to hold money in your hands, fold the stack in half (like we usually do without even thinking about it), or use your thumb to pinch the stack of bills from the front and back instead of sideways :)

So sweet thinking that 2p is the equivalent of £2 🥰

Originally our paper notes also had the size scale for sight impaired, but the new notes also having the braille like dotes, such a thoughtful feature to add. End of next month the last paper £20 and £50 notes go out of circulation so we'll be completely polymer.

You do need to be aware that the UK has become almost cashless since Covid - most people use debit cards or phone apps even for small sums. Cash is still accepted everywhere so don't worry! It might have been interesting to compare values too: as of just now, the US dollar is worth 77 pence.

Afternoon all. The big reason why British notes are all different sizes is to help blind individuals more easily differentiate between note. Same reason that certain parts of the notes are raised (lightly run your thumb over the part that reads "Bank of England". Quick tip for when you get over here. Remember the difference between the penny & the pound (cents & dollars). Coins tend to be pennys (cents), (£1 & £2 being the main 2 exceptions), Notes are pounds Edit: visually impaired, rather than blind. My apologies for my slip up there

In the UK we are more of a digital cash system, using debit cards (checking account equivalent), and credit cards. We also use contactless payment from mobile phones or smart watches, available on Android or Apple devices. I personally very rarely have physical cash.

Something important that hasn't been mentioned is that Bank of England aren't the only Sterling notes. For example I'm in Northern Ireland and we use BoE notes but also Ulster Bank, Bank of Ireland, First Trust etc. Scotland have their notes too (im unsure about Wales) all are sterling notes but just issued by different banks.

Being British I found American notes hard work, if I didn't put them in order of value I couldn't figure what was which. Our plastic notes are far easier to count at the end of a work day, and last longer,